Another way Amazon wants to persuade you to sign up for Prime.

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Amazon keeps piling on the Prime perks: on the heels of adding gaming bonuses via Twitch Prime recently, the company has launched a new benefit for readers called Amazon Prime Reading. The service for US Prime members will give them unlimited access to over a thousand Kindle books, magazines, comics, and other reading material at no extra cost.

Some of the included titles are The Hobbit, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, When I'm Gone, The Complete Peanuts Collection Vol. 1, andTransformers: Robots in Disguise Vol. 1. Members can also flip through current issues of magazines including National Geographic Traveler, People, and Sports Illustrated without having subscriptions to those publications.

Further Reading

Current Prime members now have Prime Reading included in their $99 yearly membership, and all new members who sign up will get access to it, too. Also, you don't need a Kindle or Amazon Fire device to make use of Prime Reading: all included titles are available via the Android and iOS Kindle apps. Prime Reading adds to Amazon's list of book perks for Prime members, which includes Kindle Unlimited, the $10 per month subscription service that provides access to over one million titles, and the Kindle Owner's Lending Library, which lets members borrow one e-book a month from a wider pool of books.

It appears the Prime Reading library is smaller and different from that of Kindle Unlimited, so it may end up being a good way for Prime users to test out Amazon's extra reading services. It's possible that some customers may be encouraged to sign up for Kindle Unlimited after checking out Prime Reading—but on the flip side, current Kindle Unlimited customers may stop paying the extra $10 per month if they prefer Prime Reading's selection.

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Valentina Palladino
Valentina reviews consumer electronics for Ars Technica, testing all kinds of gadgets with a focus on mobile devices and wearables. She has a soft spot for Chromebooks. Twitter@valentinalucia